


some branches fall to open arms

by cishet



Series: right for sky [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Domestic Bliss, Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Post-Canon, Retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 22:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21736777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cishet/pseuds/cishet
Summary: History writes of the scarlet red of Emperor Edelgard von Hresvelg’s robes and the rivers of blood that once ran at her feet. What escapes its view, seen by one woman alone, is the red flush of El’s cheeks, bright red as the apples which hang heavy from the trees.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth
Series: right for sky [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1566670
Comments: 42
Kudos: 235





	some branches fall to open arms

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [we could turn the world to gold](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20452511) by [softshocks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/softshocks/pseuds/softshocks). 



In the year 1195, ten years after the War of Unification, Emperor Edelgard von Hresvelg abdicates the throne.

The next Emperor is a woman personally vetted and selected for her empathy and intellectual acuity. She is proven in multiple roles of office, both known and loved by the people. She might once have been considered a lowborn commoner, though those distinctions matter little at this point.

Edelgard von Hresvelg oversees the succession, then along with her trusted advisor Byleth Eisner, she departs.

This is where their place in the history books ends.

Where exactly they departed to will remain a matter of historical contention. The letters that Edelgard sends—correspondence with her friends and former allies, political consultation to the capital—bear no return address or otherwise identifying marks. And though they publicly attend festivals and celebrations across Fódlan and Brigid, their whereabouts outside these occasions will go unknown.

History will never know the location of the woods they retreat to, a serene forest tucked in one of Fódlan’s quiet pockets that would seem, to any observing eye, practically untouched by the ravages of war. Their visits to surrounding villages to purchase flour, paints, and other such supplies go unspoken by their inhabitants. No records will remain of the cabin they lived in, a haven for just the two of them carved out in warm beams of oak.

The morning sun that rises shines first on their garden, each leaf and blade of grass gleaming jade green with the dew. In the summer, their tomatoes and peaches are take on jewel-like hues, though the winter turnips and radishes lie sleeping underground.

The sunlight paints its way into their bedroom next, rousing the clutter of cats that make their home by the bed. Mother cats give birth in their yard from time to time, and both Edelgard and Byleth are far too fond of the little creatures to simply leave them to fend for themselves.

Byleth always rises first, throwing on her cloak and stepping outside with the cats crowding around her feet. She walks briskly down to the river or lake, sometimes with rod in hand, sometimes with net or spear. Her early mornings are spent by the water’s edge, basking in the little disturbances in the quiet air—the sweet melody of birdsong, the rustle of leaves by hand of wind or animal. She feeds the smaller catches to her feline admirers and keeps a few of the larger ones for supper.

When Byleth returns home, she presses soft kisses to her wife’s face—forehead, nose, cheeks, or lips—until she awakens with a smile. Edelgard had lived the life of near-insomniac for many years, and that of an early riser (born out of necessity) for several more. But the nightmares loosened their grip on her after years of hard-won peace, and her duty is done, crown and mantle laid down. Here, with only one person who knows her name or cares enough to speak it, she sleeps at ease.

Perhaps Byleth pulls her wife out of bed to prepare breakfast, eggs from the chickens in the yard that the well-fed cats can’t bother to chase in any earnestness. Or perhaps Edelgard pulls her wife back into bed for a time, for a different kind of meal. Who could say but the cats in their calling, or the crickets in their chirping, or the sun in its steady beat as it floods the room, creeping steadily up into the sky.

Byleth cooks. Cooking is not new to her, of course—many hours were spent at the Monastery both consuming and preparing food, and being raised as a mercenary taught her to fend for herself. But her repertoire expands greatly with the time she able to devote to it.

She creates a hundred dishes to be prepared with just the plants grown or foraged outside, even more variations made possible with the addition of fish or game meat. She invents a sauce, tinged bright red with tomatoes, that can enhance the taste of any food it is poured over. When Edelgard vetoes its indiscriminate addition to their meals with bewilderment and concern, Byleth takes to bottling the stuff for her own personal use. This has the upside of making the sauce last longer, and she always plants enough tomatoes to ensure a supply that lasts her the entire year.

She likes to cook Edelgard’s favourite foods, recreations of Enbarrian sweets born from intangible memories of taste alone. Edelgard tries to help, but after the fifth time an axe winds up on the counter and a pot catches fire, Byleth learns to keep her away from sources of heat and sharp utensils. They go through sacks of flour baking pies and tarts and dainty teacakes, and Byleth constructs fine nests of golden spun sugar. It’s difficult work, far more delicate than anything her hands are used to, but it’s worth it to see the gaze of wonderment and satisfied grin that spreads its way across her wife’s face.

Edelgard paints. Her hobby had been left largely unattended to during her years of duty, rarely finding the time to complete more than half a sketch. Even her oldest portraits of Byleth had been hidden away for shame, never again seeing the light of day.

With the rest of her life a blank canvas stretching out before her, Edelgard lifts her brush and gives form to the world around her. She paints landscapes, many of them. Scenes of the forest, and the hills around the forest, and the sky and the water and every inch between them. Sometimes there is Byleth, part of the environment—a distant figure turned toward the river, a curve of blue lying in the shade of a tree.

She has a small sunlit studio with a comfortable setup of easels and oils but rarely uses it, choosing instead to paint in the field. There is a longing in Edelgard’s bones that was born an eternity ago between cuffs and caskets of stone and steel. The ache is almost forgotten but every cell in her body will always sing in the open air, the earth teeming with life beneath her feet.

Their old friends come to visit from time to time. 

Linhardt, Caspar, and Bernadetta still travel across the great reaches of Fódlan, to Almyra and beyond. This entails Caspar barging around causing trouble, long-suffering Linhardt fixing each issue with a sigh and a smile, and Bernadetta playing historian-botanist, scratching out the tale of their adventures around sketches of endemic plants from all corners of the world.

As all historians do, Bernadetta paints out one side of the truth. Her manuscripts conveniently leave out her place in the story, foraging and hunting with a keen eye and smoothing over ruffled feathers when Linhardt could not, or otherwise would not rise from his slumber. And she omits the trips they make each time they pass through that unknown pocket of Fódlan.

She does not write about how they all pile into the lounge, built for two and straining to fit five, and huddle around the fireplace with cups of the brews picked up along their travels, swapping stories over Dagdan coffees and Srengi teas. She does not write about how Caspar attempts to sneak away with half a litter of kittens in his pack, being found out only when Byleth tries to fill it with fresh bread and aged cheeses for their journey out. She does write about a cat that joins them on their travels, turning their trio into an inseparable quartet. But she does not write about where the cat came from, born in the garden of the small oaken cabin by the river and the lake.

Lysithea and Annette come by when they can, in the lulls of the rhythm of school life. They run their own academy now, bright minds set to teaching the next generation to shine even brighter. Lysithea’s life stretches before her the same way Edelgard’s does, a bridge built miraculously over a great chasm to connect to the path of her future she thought she might never reach. There is time, time to grow old, to watch others grow old. Time smooths out her sharp edges. With Annette, she settles, mellows. The happiness suits her more than harsh intensity ever did.

The pair always come bearing sweets, intricate tarts and candies that Byleth tries and fails to reconstruct. She could achieve it if she wanted to, with enough practice, but decides that the way Edelgard’s eyes light up devilishly when their friends set down their spoils is more than enough reward for no effort. Cost and benefit.

Instead, Byleth cooks their supper those nights with as many vegetables as possible—Lysithea and Annette are grown adults and can care for themselves, but she isn’t quite sure if she trusts them with balanced nutrition. The sweets and tea are always demolished first, Lysithea never turns her nose up at her plate of vegetables afterwards. Byleth takes that more as proof of her skill in cooking than any development of her friend’s tastes, however—she sees the suspicious eye with which she regards the beans and capsicums outside.

Dorothea and Petra come only once, finding it difficult to sneak away from their duties in Brigid in unattended privacy. They sing songs from across the sea in the garden, and dance long into the moonlight until they fall upon the grass in breathless laughter. More often, Byleth and Edelgard make the trip out to Brigid themselves, riding through stretches of countryside to cross the great bridge connecting Fódlan to the isles. If anyone were to know of the distance between their homes, they would agree that the journey was both long and shorter than one might expect.

In years gone past, travel to Brigid was accompanied by a degree of political fanfare, as befitting of the meeting of two heads of state. But in this unwritten chapter of their lives, the posturing falls by the wayside. There is no diplomacy to be had here, only simple hospitality between friends, and they are received at the gates with open arms.

They come for the festivals mostly, the grand joyous celebrations of the sky and sea which cannot be seen within Fódlan’s borders. On these occasions, Brigid’s queens tumble out into the streets with the rest of the people to dance and feast on mountains of fresh catch, which Byleth adores and Edelgard learns to appreciate.

When they arrive early, travel unbeset by rain or other disturbance, Edelgard and Dorothea sit on the shore to watch their wives sail out onto the sea with the other fishers, harpoons at the ready. Over the years Byleth, like Dorothea, becomes known and loved by the Brigidian people. Their catch is always twice as bountiful when she sails with them, and she becomes known as “the lady of the waters”.

When Hubert and Ferdinand visit, it is always as a pair. Though Hubert no longer holds his post, stepping down with Edelgard, his husband remains in an advisory role on the Board of Education. Their letters discuss political discourse and the lighthearted details of everyday life in equal measure—which mares are about to foal, how the new government is developing. In person, they swap vintage wines and homemade mead over dining table conversation.

Ferdinand, intoxicated, declares one night that Edelgard’s landscapes are masterpieces and deserve to be displayed amongst those of the greats, at which Hubert swallows a grimace and nods tightly. Edelgard laughs. She sends him off with a bundle of canvases, some smaller paintings she might have discarded to make room for new work anyway. It is dismissed as drunken folly, until Ferdinand returns not a month later with a pouch of golden coins in one hand and an order for several more paintings in the other.

More paintings are requested, so Edelgard supplies them. She paints more than she can keep, regardless. It is more to clear up space in her studio than it is for the money or to oblige the wishes of some stranger. Ferdinand says not to worry for her privacy, he sells them under a pseudonym. He does not say what the pseudonym is. Edelgard does not ask. The world has known her by so many titles: _emperor, heir, war-bringer, dawn-bringer_. The only names that could matter to her now are the ones that spill from her wife’s lips: _Edelgard, El. My heart, my love._

Edelgard paints the world, and she paints _her_ world. These collections are rougher, more personal than her landscapes. There are the watercolours of the fruits and flowers that they plant in the garden, and though she will never quite match Bernadetta’s proficiency at depicting botanical minutiae, she succeeds quite handily at capturing their vibrancy. There are pages upon pages of sketches of cats, some half-painted over in her aborted efforts to depict the soft lustre of their fur.

More prolific than anything else are her portraits of Byleth. Not the half-formed memories she sketched out during the war, but the woman before her now. Byleth in the garden, chopping firewood and glistening with exertion. Byleth in a tree, climbing like a child to reach the fruit on the highest branches. Byleth in the lounge, napping by the window bathed in afternoon sun. Byleth in their bed, tranquil and blissful and at peace.

These paintings are kept private, their existence unknown to growing contingent of collectors who prize her work. History will only know them years later, when their bodies return to the earth and Ferdinand retrieves their belongings to be stored safely away on the Aegir-Vestra estate. History will know of Edelgard’s portraits, but follow with off-base discourse of the exact nature of their relationship, emperor-advisor or lovers or close companions with some other amorphous bond. They will know what she painted but not why, will not know the half of it.

Edelgard paints Byleth not because she is in love, or at least not _just_ because she is in love. She paints because she can, because she has these hands and these eyes and this life which is hers. She paints because for all that was taken from them, for all they endured, here they are: still beating, still breathing, mostly whole and wholly happy. Here in this world they created, a lifetime away from the darkness that once touched them, she owes her time and life to nothing and no one but the ridiculous woman with the indigo hair who sometimes deems it appropriate to catch fish with her bare teeth and who has a laugh as bright and clear as the sunrise.

The moon that rises gleams on the lake, and a warm breeze carries over the water as it lights it up brighter than the star-wrecked sky. On nights like these, the long-married couple sit in each other’s arms beneath the trees with glasses of peach or plum wine or whatever else they have brewing in the back shed. Byleth holds her liquor well, but Edelgard blushes up to her ears when she drinks and down the nape of her neck when soft lingering kisses are laid there.

History writes of the scarlet red of Emperor Edelgard von Hresvelg’s robes and the rivers of blood that once ran at her feet. What escapes its view, seen by one woman alone, is the red flush of El’s cheeks, bright red as the apples which hang heavy from the trees. Byleth slices that colour apart, enough infinitesimally small pieces to consume her sweetness for all the rest of her days.

**Author's Note:**

> show me one lesbian who does not dream of abandoning society to live off the grid in the woods with their wife! it is simply The Culture
> 
> the most important character detail here is that hubert canonically hates landscape paintings. he is very conflicted about edelgard's new vocation
> 
> this was originally meant to be just retired garden sex, except i kept all the retired gardens and left out the sex. i'll write a follow-up with the latter part of that sometime, don't worry
> 
> come find me at @butchidols on twitter if you want to discuss byleth's self-actualisation as a lumberjack lesbian


End file.
